Control Engineering Primer

Control Engineering Primer September 22, 2026 Lab

MPC Lab — re-solve a curvature sequence within a horizon and steering limits

Change the horizon, weights and steering limit, and compare predicted paths, solver convergence and failure handling in your browser.

Hands-on · 4 min Control Engineering Primer September 22, 2026 Lab

Path-tracking comparison Lab — run PP, APP, RPP, Stanley and MPC under the same conditions

Run five trackers together on one vehicle, path, initial state and steering limit, and compare cross-track error, smoothness and completion with shared metric definitions.

Hands-on · 3 min Control Engineering Primer September 21, 2026 Lab

Adaptive Pure Pursuit Lab — scale lookahead with speed

Compare speed-scaled lookahead with PP, including acceleration and minimum/maximum bounds.

Hands-on · 3 min Control Engineering Primer September 21, 2026 Lab

Pure Pursuit Lab — compare fixed-lookahead path tracking

Change fixed lookahead and inspect tracking error, steering and targets on a shared vehicle model.

Hands-on · 3 min Control Engineering Primer September 21, 2026 Lab

Regulated Pure Pursuit Lab — speed through curves and near the goal

Separate lookahead from speed regulation and compare curvature limits, speed floors, final approach and actual vehicle speed.

Hands-on · 4 min Control Engineering Primer September 21, 2026 Lab

Stanley Lab — steering from front-axle cross-track and heading error

Separate front and rear axle errors and compare gain, speed and steering constraints in your browser.

Hands-on · 3 min Control Engineering Primer September 8, 2026 Lab

Run a Kalman filter in Python: noise, missing data and outliers

Compare Q, R and outlier gating on one synthetic trajectory using estimation error and rejected observations.

Hands-on · 3 min Control Engineering Primer September 7, 2026 Lab

Experiment with PID in Python — gains, delay and saturation

Reproduce how measurement delay, actuator limits and integral windup change PID tracking on the same second-order model.

Hands-on · 2 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: State Observers and the Linear Kalman Filter

Sensor readings are not the state itself. This primer explains observability, Kalman predict/update equations, covariance, numerical examples, control integration, robot implementation, and fault-safe behavior.

Fundamentals · 5 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: LQR — State Feedback From Explicit Priorities

LQR derives state-feedback gains from a state-space model and a quadratic cost. This primer covers Riccati equations, observability, PID/MPC tradeoffs, robot implementation, numerical intuition, and safety.

Fundamentals · 5 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: Model Predictive Control — Acting Within Constraints

Model Predictive Control predicts future behavior with a model, optimizes a constrained input sequence, applies only its first move, and repeats. This primer covers equations, tuning, safety, implementation, and current examples.

Fundamentals · 6 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: Path Planning — A*, Dijkstra, RRT, RRT*, and PRM

Path planning is not drawing a shortest line. This primer compares grid and continuous-space algorithms while accounting for robot footprint, map uncertainty, computation, SLAM/Nav2 integration, and safety.

Fundamentals · 5 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: PID Control — Working Across Three Time Scales

PID is not merely three gains. This primer connects its intuition and equations to sampling, saturation, anti-windup, tuning, safety, ROS 2, and real implementation checks.

Fundamentals · 7 min Control Engineering Primer September 3, 2026

Control Engineering Primer: Trajectory Generation — Minimum Jerk, Quintics, and Trapezoidal Profiles

A path says where to travel; a trajectory says when and with what velocity, acceleration, and jerk. This primer covers minimum-jerk, quintic, trapezoidal profiles, constraints, safety, and ROS 2 integration.

Fundamentals · 4 min